Women's basketball drops two more; streak rises to eight straight losses

This weekend the women's basketball team extended its losing streak to eight with defeats at the hands of Dartmouth and Harvard.

At halftime of both games, the Tigers looked like they could snap their skid, but they came up short in the second half.

Friday night, the Tigers built a quick lead on Dartmouth with a barrage of three-pointers, but the Big Green was able to keep it close, converting seven free throws in the first half.

Princeton led 34-23 at the break, but surrendered an astonishing 53 points in the second half, while Princeton scored only 57 points in the entire contest.

The Big Green shot 19-27 - over 70 percent - in the second period, while the Tigers only made two more baskets than that in the whole game, shooting 21-60.

"For a ten-minute stretch against Dartmouth, despite calling timeouts, we could not stop the bleeding," head coach Richard Barron said. "I think they went on something like a 30-5 run to end the game. It was just a very, very bad ten minutes."

Sophomore forward Kelly Schaeffer, one of only two double-digit scorers on the Princeton side, provided one of the few bright spots for the Tigers with a 15-point performance in 31 minutes.

"Kelly Schaeffer has given us more leadership than anybody on the team as a sophomore," Barron said.

The star of the game, however, was Dartmouth's Katharine Hanks, who scored a career-high 34 points. In essence, the Big Green rolled over Princeton, and Princeton just rolled over.

"We laid down," Barron said. "We gave up. We have to try to change that culture of expectation. It's a pride thing."

Princeton restored some of its pride by playing well against Harvard. Down only four at the half, the Tigers could have been leading if they had not started the game out so slowly.

"In the first three minutes of the game, they went on a 14-3 run," Barron said. "We cut it to one several times, but we dug ourselves a hole before we started going."

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Princeton, however, was able to keep the game within reach against the league-leading Crimson, whom it defeated Jan. 11 for its last win. The Tigers were able to take advantage of their possessions by scoring nearly half, 33, of their 70 points from beyond the twenty-foot arc.

In the end, however, even a valiant effort from the lone senior on the team, guard Lauren Rigney, could not hold off Harvard, as the Crimson won the game 78-70.

Now that Princeton is eliminated from the Ivy League title race, complacency can easily follow the squad through its remaining five games.

"The best thing about the Harvard game was that we didn't quit playing," Barron said. "Sometimes players are too easily satisfied with playing well for one half or playing well individually."

The Tigers have played three of their best games of the season against Harvard and Penn, two of the top three teams in the Ivy League. However, they have lost to the three lowest-ranked teams in the league besides themselves by more than thirteen points a game.

"We are playing better against the top half of the league than the bottom," Barron said. "We need to learn to play well against the teams we can actually beat."